Show notes
The Wizard of Oz is supposed by the land’s inhabitants to be its most powerful magician. But far from having any actual power, he is not even native to the place in which real magic is in plentiful supply. Oddly, this supernatural world seems to be secretly governed by mundane sleight of hand, and growing up, for Dorothy, involves uncovering the flimsy basis of adult authority. Which magic is more potent: the childish imagination, or the symbolic power of grown-ups to educate it? Wes & Erin analyze the 1939 film, “The Wizard of Oz.” Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail” here: http://subtextpodcast.com/avail For bonus content, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes. Also from Wes: Curtain Times, a calendar of Boston theatre, classical, talks and readings. Follow:Twitter | Facebook | Website Thanks to Nick Ketter for the audio editing on this episode. Transcript 0:09 Wes: The wizard of Oz is supposed by the land's inhabitants to be its most powerful magician. But far from having any actual power, he's not even native to the place in which real magic is in plentiful supply. Oddly, this supernatural world seems to be secretly governed by mundane sleight of hand. And growing up for Dorothy involves uncovering the flimsy basis of adult authority. Which magic is more potent? The childish imagination or the symbolic power of adults to educate it? Today we discuss the 1939 film the wizard of Oz. This is Wes Alwan, and this is Erin O'Luanaigh, and you're listening to Subtext. And not all episodes of Subtext will appear here. subtextpodcast.com subscribe or by searching for us within the app itself. So, Erin, what do you call a government that is ruled by a stage magician? 1:18 Erin: What? 1:19 Wes: A prestidigitocracy. 1:24 Erin: That's a good one, Wes. 1:26 Wes: So we had been talking about this offline a little bit, so you. I think I've already familiarized you with this idea, but one of the things that struck me about the film and the book is that I find it very interesting that we get transported into this magical world, this fantasy world, but at the center of it, there's this person who is not a real magician, doesn't have real magic. So there's plenty of real magic in that world with witches and so on, and then trees that throw apples at you and all that. But when it comes to this central figure who's supposed to solve all these problems, he is just a kind of a version of a stage magician with no real powers. So it's as if there's this intrusion of the mundane into something that's supposed to be fantastic. I should say that in the book, it uses the word rule. The wizard of Oz rules over the Emerald City. In the script, it's cut out. He lives there, you know, he's said, of course, to be the all powerful. It's unclear, in a way, what his role in the Emerald City actually is. In the book, he's straightforwardly a ruler. I think I had gotten the idea that he was the ruler of Oz, and then I realized, well, wait a minute, you know, it's just the Emerald City. 2:45 Erin: Well, is there Professor Marvel in the book or is everything from that frame narrative kind of. 2:50 Wes: Everything from the frame narrative is cut out. I only read the first part of it and then skimmed the rest. So a listener can correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure, yeah, there's no Professor Marvel. 3:00 Erin: Wow. Okay. Yeah, Yeah, I guess that didn't occur to me until you said that while we were watching. Cause we watched it together. It's funny, you know, every time I watch that movie, and it's been a lot of times I watch it as a kid, like, I just, I remember all of my emotions and I'd never tried to analyze it before or even seen any sort of, you know, I just sort of swallow the message at the end and that's it. And never thought about it. So this is a very strange exercise to subtextual a film like this that I have such. I think we both were talking about how we have such primal feelings when it comes to this film and such weird remembrances of it and. Yeah, so that's one of the things that I. You said it. And I kind of noticed that. And lots of other things too, that I don't think that the wizard is the only charlatan in Oz, which is interesting too, but we'll get to that, I'm sure. 3:51 Wes: So. Yeah. What do you mean by that? He's not the only charlatan? 3:54 Erin: Well, I think Dorothy might be the other one. I don't know if that's like too strong of a word, but I mean, she lands in Oz, she's getting celebrated for something that she does accidentally. And in fact, later when the, when the Wicked Witch shows up and says to her, did you kill my sister? Dorothy says, no. She's like, no, no, it was an accident. I didn't mean to kill anybody. And then she kind of like trades on that fame to get into the Emerald City. And then we find out that Oz himself showed up there accidentally and was. Oh, and she's also, of course, the main part of that is that Glinda thinks she's a witch and she's not really a witch. Right. So she has this magical power foisted upon her. And presumably so has Oz. He got there accidentally via balloon. And so we can imagine that his inhabiting Oz and making a sort of a long term career out of. Out of being called a wizard by the, you know, indigenous population is. 4:58 Wes: He's sort of the Kurtz of. 5:01 Erin: Well, yeah. And so he's sort of got a. 5:03 Wes: Heads. There's no heads on spikes. But. 5:05 Erin: Right. Well, I have a great deal of sympathy for him because he has to. He actually has a tremendous amount of wisdom, I think. And he's built it up over time. He's taken his personal brand and built 5:16 Wes: it up over time. And unlike Dorothy, who. 5:22 Erin: Yeah. And Dorothy just wants to leave. Right. That's because she's pure at heart or young at heart or whatever. The thing at the beginning is, you know, she just wants to leave. But maybe the Oz figure is a figure of, like, this is what will happen to you if you're not, you know, real connected with your roots the way you should be by going back to Kansas. This is the bad stuff that'll happen to you, which I don't know that that's bad. And I also don't know. Again, it's. Watching this as a kid, it's like, no one would think of this. But I also just wonder what good or comes of Dorothy's return. Like, it's a dream. She has to wake up eventually. Unless she's gonna be in a coma for the rest of her life. But. Yeah. So I don't know if that's the right choice, per se, if it is a choice. And what awaits her when she goes back to Kansas? 6:07 Wes: What you said earlier on really struck me, which is that when you sort of watch this without thinking about subtext, you just sort of absorb the message at the end, which is a weird message, Right? How does she put it? She says, so this is. She's still in Oz and she's talking to Glinda. I get bothered by plot holes in movies. Just irrationally bothered when, you know, I know I should be suspending disbelief, but the whole idea that she had to go through all this because you've always had the power to go back to Kansas. 6:41 Erin: Right. 6:42 Wes: I'd be really pissed. 6:44 Erin: Are you freaking kidding me? 6:46 Wes: That was a lot to go through. A lot of very traumatic stuff, including thinking you're gonna die. 6:51 Erin: Well, the idea that, like, Glinda, you know, who thinks that Dorothy is a witch and that Kansas is a star, still, like, knows what's best for Dorothy, and that is a perilous, like, physical and emotional journey is really funny. 7:05 Wes: So it's the Scarecrow who says, then why didn't you tell her before? Which, you know, they have to do. I mean, imagine this hadn't been explained. That would have been so frustrating. So Glinda, because she wouldn't have believed me. She had to learn it for herself. Then the Tin man asks her, what have you learned, Dorothy? Dorothy Well, I think that it wasn't enough just to want to see Uncle Henry and Auntie M. It's that if I ever go looking for my heart's desire again, I won't look any further than my own backyard, because if it isn't there, I never really lost it to begin with. Is that right? And Glinda says that's it because it 7:41 Erin: just wasn't there in the first place. So you can't lose something you didn't have. Like. 7:45 Wes: Yeah. What does this mean if it isn't there? I never really lost it. So what did she think she lost? 7:53 Erin: Her heart's desire. So in other words, she's saying she never really had any ambition. 7:58 Wes: Well, she left because she's trying to protect Toto. 8:01 Erin: Yeah, but Professor Marvel also picks up on another motive. And, you know, he picks up on the fact that she's running away after a couple of tries. And then he says something like, they don't understand you at home. They don't appreciate you. You want to see other. Other lands, big mountains, big oceans, big cities. Something like that. 8:20 Wes: And then Dorothy says, why, it's just like you could read what was inside of me. 8:25 Erin: Right? But I think that the desire to escape with Toto and this desire to break out of Kansas and go see all these places, protecting Toto and leaving maybe are two sides of the same coin. 8:36 Wes: So, yeah, it's not just protecting Toto, but in the very beginning, there's the dissatisfaction with all the adults that aren't paying attention to her and her concerns about Toto. And then this fantasy of going to somewhere over the rainbow. This suggests that her heart's desire has something to do with finding a place where people would listen to her. Or, you know, maybe it has something to do with her parents. Right? She's an orphan. She's with her aunt and uncle. She's with people who are preoccupied with surviving and tending to the farm. And in particular, the three farmhands are going to give her all this hypocritical adult advice. Be smart, be courageous. Things, qualities that they don't themselves have. And then ultimately, I think we're supposed to think that the heart's desire thing is ambiguous between growing up and not growing up. Because Oz is sort of this hybrid world. It's not the over the rainbow paradise. There's lots of terrible things in it. And it's this weird, weirdly childish place, right, where there are munchkins. And it's sort of a. If going away from home is growing up, she's not really left, in a sense, by going to Oz. That's not the. 9:47 Erin: To go back to the beginning, you know, we first see Dorothy and Toto on the road back to the farmhouse, escaping Ms. Gulch. And then we very quickly see Auntie Em and Uncle Henry. And everything seems to me to look like a Dorothea Lange photograph. Like, you know, very dust Bowl y. This is a very broken down place. And Dorothy's pristineness, shall we say, like she's not engaged in the work of the farm the way that some children might be. You know, she's not like some girl who's out there with her pigtails. Yes. But somewhat disheveled and with some overalls, like helping out around the farm. And. And you can even say, I guess, that her attachment to Toto also marks a kind of like a divergence from farm life. Just having a pet solely as a companion. When I was a kid and I still kind of feel this way, I always thought of Auntie Em less so Uncle Henry because he uses. I figured out why he uses terms of endearment with her, and he's a little gentler with her, which I think is typical of an older man with a young girl. But I always thought of Auntie Em as being really mean, and she's really not. In fact, Auntie Em actually in particular seems to really love Dorothy. And there's an urgency to what she's doing in those opening scenes. Like, the farm incubator has broken and so they have to save all these baby chicks, and we're told that, like, some of them are gonna die. So that's a little bit immediately sort of a weird thing. And so Dorothy's coming up and Dorothy has really real concerns. Like she's trying to say that Toto is, you know, gonna get taken away and Ms. Gulch is mad and all this stuff. And. And I guess Auntie Em is like, actually kind of being pretty patient with Dorothy. But, you know, as a kid, you just get this sense of injustice on Dorothy's behalf, that there's an urgency in what Dorothy is trying to tell them. And everyone is dismissing what seems like really real concerns. 11:40 Wes: Why do you think she's being patient? Cause it did seem to me like she was being dismissive. 11:44 Erin: So she doesn't just, like, yell at Dorothy and tell her to go away. Yeah, she, like, tries to give a reason for why she can't listen to Dorothy right now. And she's. She's in the middle of. I don't know if I was in that kind of a situation. And I had some kid coming up to me and bugging me while I was trying to do something urgent. I probably would treat her with a little bit less charity than that, which is really mean to say, but I'd just be like, hey, you know what? Just like, get away from me. I'll talk to you later, you know. Instead, she kind of tries to explain to Dorothy what's going on and says, you know, okay, go away. Like, she does dismiss her, but it's not. But she's not a cruel person at all. And I thought of her as being cruel when I was a kid. Like, everybody's so mean to Dorothy, and Dorothy's trying to tell them that Toto is gonna get hurt and who cares about whatever they're doing, you know, which is a. Very. Obviously, you know, kids have a strong identification with Dorothy and feel those feelings with her, even if that's not kind of what the larger film is showing more objectively. 12:37 Wes: Yeah, I mean, I think the adults all have good reasons in a way, or at least from an adult perspective, because in all likelihood, at that point in the movie, Dorothy's overreacting to something that. A cranky neighbor. Right. Who did something to Toto. It turns out not to be the case. Turns out to be that the threat is very real and something that should be taken seriously. But these are people who are focused on survival. The whole idea of a desolate landscape is very important, in contrast to the attempt to raise animals and to engage in farming and animal husbandry. And there's a lot here about fertility, including the incubator and the chicks, which I think we have to draw connections between that and Dorothy's adolescence. And, you know, there's also even the contrast with Mrs. Gulch. Right, Gulch. Like a dried up creek bed, an old hag. The very personification of infertility associated with being an old maid really is the suggestion. So in this context, where for the aunt and uncle and the farmhands, their lives at stake as well. Right. They're taking care of animals, they're trying to nurture and keep alive. So they're playing this role with respect to the farm that they're not entirely playing with respect to Dorothy. Right. They're sort of. It's a kind of version of parenting that's going on with the farm, nurturing and raising up and all that stuff. And Dorothy is an orphan, lives a life that is oblique to that in a way. And I think that's something I really did not think about, which should be glaringly obvious. Which you pointed out is how out of place she is with that dress. And, I mean, even before she gets t…
Full show notes at the publisher 
Our TOPPODCAST Picks 
Stay Connected
